Lawsonia Links - A Short Hitter's Dream Course

[Dan Moore]

I've been thinking since the weekend about how much fun the Links course is to play. If I'm being critical, however, I'd say that the greens are probably the weakest part of the course. I'm not saying that the greens are bad, not at all. But what I'm saying is that the greens aren't quite as impressive as the rest of the course--the elevation changes, the bunkering, the blind shots, etc. There are a few very good greens, such as the 6th, which is just awesome, but by and large, the greens are not as bold and interesting as the rest of the course.

Am I wrong? I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Like I said, it's only if I'm being extra-critical of what is one of the finest (and certainly most fun) courses I've ever played.

Brian,


I think you will discover with multiple plays that the greens are not only as good as the rest of what you laud, but maybe even better. Some are clearly better than others and you couldn't play all the best positions in one round, but they are all pretty good. I think it takes seeing a number of different pin positions to really appreciate all the subtlties and see just how good they are. I hope you get the chance.  Cheers.

[BHoover]

Dan, you're probably right. And I'm more than happy to be wrong!

[Mike Hendren]

Back to it after stuffing myself at The Eseeola Lodge's seafood buffett and honing, with some success my de-greening skills at Linville Golf Club.

The 5th is a half par hole for all players, though it features the only true claustrophobic drive on the premises.  The downhill fairway is not visible from the tee due to the high native grass so the only strategy is to fit the drive between the trees - a visual shocker after being able to swing freely on the first few drives of the day.  The hole plays as a straight-away two shooter for the player capable of driving the ball 250 yards or more.  For our 225 yards straw man the deep depression short left of the green works in tandem with the diagonal right hand bunker (and unfortunately an unnecessary tree) and forces the player to fit the second in between them or lay up with a mid-iron right of the depression and it's steep bank.  Very little is to be gained by taking on the twin hazards, but most golfers will likely be suckered into doing so. 



One feels pressure to score well here a stellar par-plus-half hole follows.

[Jason Thurman]

I said earlier that I don’t find the tee shot on 2 particularly strategic. While Jason Topp notes that the approach opens up more from the right side, my general draw ballflight makes that less of an advantage for my own game. I must admit that the tee shot at 5 isn’t a particularly strategic one either for me. It’s not a hole where I can choose a side of the fairway to get a better angle of approach, at least off the tee. Instead, as a short and extremely reachable par 5, it’s more a hole where I try my damnedest to keep the ball in bounds and away from the tree on the right while avoiding the native cut left. It doesn’t take a big drive to get into position to reach in two, although the downslope in the landing zone gives some incentive to try and blast one that runs down to around the 150 mark.
 
On this forum, we often confuse shots that aren’t especially strategic as being “bad.” On the contrary, I think the tee shot on 5 is a great one even if it’s straight out of the penal school of design. Given the incentive to attack such a short hole, the penal consequences of a miss to either side raise the stakes and give pause to a bomber who wants to obliterate the hole from the tee.


Distance is its own reward on 5, as a ball hit far down the fairway not only shortens the second shot, but also reduces the need to challenge the approach bunkers that come into play for longer shots. If you can hit a short or mid iron for your approach, you can simply fly the ball to the green and you don’t have to worry nearly as much about the bunker on the right as someone who approaches on a lower trajectory and must give room for a shot to run out. Likewise, the bunkers affect approaches from the rough with less spin far more than they do approaches from the fairway that can be stopped more quickly. None of this would matter nearly as much without the severe penalty for missing long on the green, but it’s not one you want to run through.

[Phil McDade]

The drive on the 5th in arguably the lone hole at Lawsonia where Langford routed the course to create a speed slot for the longer, more aggressive driver of the ball. Langford's use of width meant that placement on the correct side of the fairway is usually the demand put on the golfer off the tee, but not here. Accuracy is paramount, as Bogey says, but length creates a big benefit for those who can hit the speed slot and add probably another 50 yards to a tee shot.


Again, I think this hole really shows how Langford shined in creating different opportunities and challenges for a range of golfers. The long hitter will want to attack the green with a long-iron/fairway wood (to a green flanked by very deep bunkers), while the shorter hitter needs to place his second shot over the mound left but not in the angled bunker right. The pushed-up green means the shorter hitter is still left with a tricky pitch to reach the green in 3.

[Mike Hendren]

Patrick Mucci would call the 6th a "great" golf hole, and he'd be correct.

The short hitter must carefully choose his line based upon his ability as gauged during the first five holes.  The hollow and fronting hillock are much more dramatic than depicted in the aerial.  Us short low-ball hitters can't afford to flirt with it, hence the line chosen. The downfall is that the green becomes unreachable as a 210 yards carry is required on the approach. The line shown measures 200 yards which would die into a steep bank fronting the green.  By comparison the 250 yard drive plays into the fat of the fairway leaving a reasonable 180 yards approach to an extremely challenging green.  The tandem bunkers on the left of the fairway around 300 yards are invisible to the bomb-n-gouger.

I'd describe the green as a single plateau as the entire front right quadrant is slightly elevated above the balance of the surface which follows the lay of the landing sloping downward toward the front.   Perhaps the best on the premises.



Up next the boxcar hole - a genuine 2 or 20 hole I've yet to figure out.

Bogey

[BHoover]

I'd argue that #6 is the best hole on the course. What I especially loved was that, intentionally or not, the bunkers hide the length of the hole. My first time playing the hole, I thought it looked much shorter than it actually played. And of course the far fairway bunkers are completely hidden. So if you are a big hitter, you face the risk of finding those bunkers after blowing it over the front bunkers and thinking that you've hit a great drive. Then the green is both superb and diabolical. Come up short and you face the most undulating surface on the course. Go long and you're just dead.

Best hole on the course in my opinion.

[RJ_Daley]

Bogey,  your red lined short knocker is just right.  What it doesn't say or show is that if the shorter hitter can flight a nice little draw, and has the courage to aim up the right FW line, at the far right end of the diagonal grass bunker/gullwing mound, the natural draw and top spin will get him well down the hill towards those blind from the tee bunkers on the left.  But, the shorter driver of the ball who doesn't aim sufficiently off the left side of the diagonal grass bunker/mound will more likely than not hit a fading/slicing ball and will not carry the far left end of the gull wing.   I've done and seen that happen time and again.  Yet, the fading slicing ball that does get to the left edge of the diagonal feature, should get at least some of the advantage of the steep slope behind the diagonal grass bunker and mound for a long but doable shot at the green. Then it gets to be how you negotiate with the false front and which tier the hole is located.  I've seen that false front eat up a very good player.   

[Ryan Farrow]

In case anyone was wondering if those grass bunkers were indeed sand based bunkers in the past, here is some visual confirmation. The 1937 Aerial is remarkably similar. One of the few untouched classics out there from the early 1900's.














Does anyone know if the old lodge (house) next to the current clubhouse was the original clubhouse?

[Phil McDade]

I'd argue that #6 is the best hole on the course.

Brian: You'll get little argument from most devotees of Lawsonia. Some might argue for the majestic 13th, but I think most would give the edge to the 6th. Just a ton of Langford touches here -- some blindness off the tee, the gentle unveiling of the hole as you walk off the tee, the use of width to provide strategic options for the player (as R.J. astutely points out), those mounds and traps that define Langford's view on how to approach holes tactically, that pushed-up green sitting in the middle of a great expanse of treeless grounds, the bold contour in the green that defines how one can attack the hole, the penal surrounds of the green. The hole to me really epitomizes how Langford utilized his singular approach to designing a golf course.

[RJ_Daley]

Ryan, your 1937 aerial changes my understanding of the original amount of trees that existed after L&M laid the course out.  I was under the impression from the drawings I have seen that far less trees existed originally surrounding 13 green and the narrow corridor of trees down to the par 3, 14th.  But if this is a 1937 aerial, those trees didn't grow in a mere decade from a sparsely treed area I thought it to be to the numerous treed one that is shown on the aerial. 

I hope Dan Moore weighs in on this.  And this also confirms my recollection of sand in the diagonal bunker on 6 from my childhood excursions there.  Just this last weekend we were wondering if there was a sand bunker behind the boxcar hole and my recollection was that there was also sand there back in the late 50s-60s.

After this 1937 aerial, it is clear that many more conifers were plugged into the corridors during 50s60s.  A load of the were put in up the right to make more of a dogleg look on 9, to the right of the right FW bunker of the driving line off the tee.  And,  load of conifers were planted between 11 and 13. 

Another surprise is that the 1937 aerial shows not pond at the bottom area below the approach on the left up to 13th green site and down to the left off the tee on 15.  Instead, a bunker down there is shown.  Also, my memory of the deep valley on 13 where the second lay-up must then cross the valley and up steeply to the green had always had a drain way or what you might call a seasonal wet-season creek/drainage.  But, it doesn't appear in 1937 to be as significant a seasonal drainage as I remember it 50s-60s. 

While the de-treeing which now has removed all the green surrounding turf stunting 13th and narrow corridor 14th par 3; original design was not treeless as I previously thought.  That means the de-treeing project over the last few years in that sector is not restoring, it is remodeling.  Perhaps remodeling to a sympathetic ideal of what the links 'should' look like. 

It was the right thing to do, at any rate, IMHO. 

Thanks Ryan.

BTW, what is obviously the clubhouse in the 1937 aerial, looks like the same old seasonal clubhouse, which was a white painted wood sided building with an old black painted screen door with one of those long springs, that I can still here in my memory slamming as people went in and out...

[Jason Thurman]

I carry my driver between 250 and 260 yards on solid strikes. When the tee is all the way back on 6, it takes a good swing to fly the grass bunker straight ahead from the tee. With firm contact, the carry is no issue. But if the contact is a little indifferent, it's easy to come up short or hit a weak fade that ends up right of the bunker and down in the rough.


What makes that grass bunker more compelling for me is how it obscures the view of the hole overall, so that all you can really see from the tee are hazards. You see the menacing grass face in the foreground, the twin bunkers in the background, and a green that seems to rise from nowhere off in the far distance. To me, it's the ideal blind drive - most of us know exactly where to hit the ball, but the fact that we can't see our landing zone and instead see all these hazards gives us pause.


This is probably only my third-favorite hole on the course, and yet I'm not sure I've played a better par 4 anywhere. I can think of about a dozen that I consider its equal, but none clearly superior in my mind.

[Jason Topp]

One thing that really surprised me in returning to Lawsonia last weekend was how many blind tee shots the course features.  1, 2, 5 and 6 for starters.  I recall the seniors complaining about the issue at the event held at Wakonda the last couple of years.
For me it does not detract from the quality of the course.  There are plenty of clues about where to hit the ball but there are a few surprises that I completely forgot about when trying to talk a couple of newcomers around the course.  The bunkers left on 5 and 6 were two prime examples.